How to buy company shares online and in real life
Everyone's probably familiar with the movie scenes where an old American man discovers a couple dozen shares of a well-known company in his closet, bought for pennies thirty years ago.
Naturally, the price of the shares skyrockets, and the man happily becomes a millionaire.
This investment is a kind of lottery with low risk and a fairly high chance of winning the grand prize.
How can you buy company shares to profit from changes in market value and possibly accrued dividends?
Thanks to the development of financial services and the internet, acquiring securities is becoming easier every day.
And it doesn't matter where you are in the world—you can buy shares of profitable companies both in person and online from the comfort of your home.
You decide for yourself which option is preferable for you and best suits your needs, but we'll explore all the available options and briefly describe the technical aspects.
How can an individual buy shares of popular companies?
The first option is perhaps the easiest to understand, but at the same time the most difficult to implement. By choosing it, you become the happy owner of a security:
As you understand, this involves purchasing a share in the company and registering it as the owner of the shareholder register. This entitles you, under certain conditions, to participate in the company's management and receive dividends from its profits.
Advantages and disadvantages
: The advantages include actual ownership of the security, which shapes your image and positively impacts your solvency.
Disadvantages also include low liquidity, as it takes some time to quickly sell shares. Furthermore, information about your ownership will be available to regulatory authorities, and if the price increases, you will be required to pay income tax.
It is possible to purchase shares of global companies from specialized firms providing such services and from some banks.
A few years ago, there were quite a few such firms, but now I have been unable to find similar intermediaries online. Most of the well-known companies in this market have ceased to exist, and the rest have moved online.
Another option is purchasing shares using CFDs . In this case, you make a transaction that also gives you the opportunity to profit from price increases and receive dividends.
But you are not the real owner and your name is not included in the register of shareholders of the company whose security you purchased:
Currently, this is the most accessible way to make money speculating in securities.
Advantages and disadvantages
First of all, it's worth noting the accessibility of this option. To buy company shares, you simply need to open an account with a broker , fund it, and open a buy trade.
Buying and selling takes literally seconds, with over 8,000 stocks available for investment. Leverage is available, and the minimum investment is $100.
Among the drawbacks, it's necessary to take a free stock trading training course or, at the very least, learn how to open trades on the trading platform.
In my opinion, buying company shares online is a more interesting option and offers far more opportunities than buying in person. You can almost completely automate the entire process, for example, by setting a pending order that will open a trade as soon as the security price becomes attractive.
You can also try investing in demo mode before committing to real money.
